Visiting
by aprilhope
Summary: 42 minutes left until the execution of John Zacchara for the murder of Logan Hayes, a murder he didn't commit. Johnny would never guess who would show up to keep him company. Sequel to my fic, "Crescendo," but can stand alone. LJ SLASH but no actual smut this time.


Visiting  
by AHS

Pentonville Penitentiary  
Port Charles, NY  
1:18 am

(42 minutes left until the execution of John Zacchara)

No watch, no clock in this tiny cell, but one of the guards boomed something about my "final hour" not long ago. It's almost time.

I was taken from population, from my regular stinking cell around 6 pm and placed in this even smaller one. More like a coffin. Trying to prepare me, I guess, for where I'll be next.

I rejected the option of my last meal. I couldn't think of any favorite foods I could manage to enjoy or even choke down under these circumstances. They still brought me something… I think they have to… but I don't know what it was. Didn't touch it.

Had my final contact with friends and family… well, family. My sister's tears ran like a fountain. Claudia clung to me painfully, pulled away and stood in the corner, came back and grabbed me again. Wondered if she would hit me again. It was hard to look at her. She could barely speak, she was so wrecked.

My father hardly spoke either, but… I don't know. He acted like… a father, almost. Like he gave a damn that I was going to die. Like he was even… sad. He didn't hug me, didn't say he loved me or anything like that, but he said things should have been different. I know Ric did all he could to save me from this, and I hope he's careful, because I could see that homicidal glint that's always in my father's eyes now flashing the face of my attorney. I didn't know if I was touched or just certain that he'd wanted to be the one to kill me someday.

I passed up my last phone call, too. The only person I wanted to talk to, wanted to see… I couldn't. Lulu… suffered another breakdown when she heard I'd been sentenced to lethal injection. They tried to keep her from finding out, but somehow she did. And this one was much worse than before, scary as that was. This one fucking _broke _her. Nikolas told me when it happened. Scott Baldwin rubbed it in. She slipped into a catatonia she still hasn't come out of.

I love her. But look what that love did. I tried to save her, and I broke her.

Well, me and Logan Hayes. Between the two of us, we completely destroyed her. I wish I had been the one to kill him. At least the son of a bitch is dead. And… I'm next.

"_Missed you, too, Zacchara."_

What the fu-… I scramble to a sitting position and back up with a start, banging my head against the cold wall by the bed. There's not a lot of light in here, but there's even less room for anyone to hide. I look everywhere, feeling stupid because of who I'm looking for.

He's dead. Has been for months. But I know that voice, too well… still.

"_C'mon, Johnny. You, of all people, do not have time to waste on denial. It's me."_

And then I see him. He comes into focus slowly, but then he's standing right in front of me, like he's just… human. But he was never that, even alive.

"_Don't worry. I'm still dead."_

I wonder for a split second if he can read my thoughts, as my mouth goes even drier and I rub my head where I hit it… Fuck, a head injury. I convince myself I'm seeing things due to a head injury. But I heard his voice before that, and… _Logan _is laughing and shaking his head no.

"_Not a hallucination. You're not crazy, more than you were already. Look…" _He smoothes his hands over where his shirt covers his stomach. _"Knife and wound are gone. No blood. This is not a horror movie." _He paces a couple of steps… all he can in the shoebox of a room… and fucking smirks. _"More like Dead Man Walking, huh?"_

The mention of what Lulu said she kept seeing… Logan, like a zombie, dripping gore… finally coaxes my voice from my sandpaper throat.

"This what you did to her? _Haunted _her? Why couldn't you leave her alone?"

"_That figures. I'm dead and I'm still ruining Lulu's life… Fucking first of all, that was not me. That was her own guilt taking the shape of the guy she jerked around, cheated on, put in a coma, drove to the edge… **stabbed to death**. I'll take responsibility for most of what went wrong in my relationship with her, and a lot of wrong I did in my sorry life, but no way am I taking the blame for shit that happened after she fucking killed me!"_

The ghost, or something, of this guy I hate, always hated… who is the reason Lulu's in a psychiatric hospital and I'm minutes from the death chamber… is ranting at me, ranting against her, _blaming her_… and I'm not getting mad. Maybe I realize there's no point. I watch him, with a calmness I could never manage before, and wait for explanation of why he's here.

"_Second, I'm not haunting you. Just… visiting."_

I can't remember the last time I laughed, but the thought of Logan Hayes breezing back into this world as some kind of asshole angel to spend my last minutes with me… makes laughter build in my chest until it bursts out of my throat and my whole body's shaking.

A guard peers in, sees only me, and I guess pre-execution hysteria is nothing new, 'cause he just walks on.

"_Don't crack up on me now, man. Hold onto what dignity you've got left… at least until they're running electricity through you and you're defecating all over yourself."_

I calm, breathing slowly, his smartass comments a sobering reminder. "I'm not getting the chair."

"_Right, sorry. You're getting the, uh… the needle in the veins treatment. Lethal injection. Well, that won't be so bad, huh?"_

I don't answer. Hardly have the energy to arch an eyebrow. Know he's not done, anyway.

"_Except… fuck, that's a really slow, drawn-out death, isn't it? From the time they start pumping the poison into you, it'll take you probably… fifteen or twenty minutes to actually die."_

"Why the fuck are you here? If you're not haunting me, then what? I know God didn't send you to hold my hand."

Silently, I wonder if this torture is just what I deserve. I may not have killed him, but I've hurt a lot of people. And my life as it is, with Lulu… gone… death hardly even feels like a punishment. I'd accepted it. Become numb to the idea. But Logan brings sharp focus… awareness, pain, a burning in my gut… and makes me feel everything that's been lost, and all that's left to lose.

He looks like he's really considering my words… I pray, only the ones I spoke… then he huffs a small laugh and smiles a small, confused smile that sits strangely on his face.

"_I sent myself. At least, I think I did. Not that I've been able to do what I wanted before now. Not sure why this was different, but here I am."_

I don't even want clarification of Logan _wanting _to be here. I ask something else. "Where… are you?" I mean to ridicule the very thought that he could end up in Heaven, but it comes out a sincere question. "What's it like?" I want to know. I need to… maybe because I know we're really not that different… and I can tell he understands.

"_I, uh… don't think they've decided what to do with me yet."_

"They?"

He shrugs, like that's a technicality that doesn't matter. _"I think I've got some work to do. I don't know. Seems I didn't live up to my potential." _Blue eyes roll. _"Could you tell?"_

"I didn't know you had potential."

I expect a "fuck you"… or just a dirty look, if he's trying to impress some higher power… but he gets quiet and serious and loses all swagger.

"_I was almost a good guy… Almost a lot of things. Almost a good soldier, good son, good boyfriend."_

"We were almost best buddies, right?" I spit, and he cocks his head and keeps on.

"_I thought she was gonna save me. That's why I couldn't fucking let go, 'cause I knew I could never manage to be good on my own. But nobody can save you, can they? Look at you. She didn't save you, and even taking the fall for her, you sure as hell didn't save her."_

"Don't talk about her anymore." I don't know if it's hearing him talk about her, or if just thinking about her now hurts too much, but… "Just shut up."

"_No more imagining if things had been different? You and Lulu getting married, having the white picket fence and the house and little blond thug kids? That saccharine fantasy's gotten you through a lot of endless days here."_

He's just guessing, digging at me.

"_Well, that and wallowing in guilt over how you failed her… how you're failing your sister… how you failed your mother… Hey, at least you're a successful failure."_

"How do you know…?"

"_And lamenting that you never got to go to Borneo and see that guy who can set things on fire just by touching them. Man, you are weird."_

Fuck. He really can read my thoughts.

"_That's not the part you don't want me to see, though… is it?"_

No. Not that, not that. I'm going to die any minute now and I don't really give a fuck, but I can't deal with this. I don't bother pretending I don't know what he's talking about. I just stay silent. Stare at the wall.

"_Lot of time to jerk off in prison. Be honest with yourself. How often were you thinking of her and how often were you thinking of me?"_

I jump up and lunge at him, fist aiming to knock the grin from his face. But he sidesteps me as I punch, and my arm feels cold. I stumble a little, pull back, stare at my hand.

Realize it just _passed through _Logan.

Don't know why it surprises me, since I know he's dead, but maybe I forgot. He looks real. Pisses me off and makes my heart pound- _head_ pound as much as when he was alive.

"_Cool your jets, Pacino. Fists won't work on me… That's not the use you've had in mind, anyway."_

He flexes his fingers and flicks his tongue out as if to lick his knuckles and I flash back to that sick, stupid dream. This feels too much like then, those days stuck in another cell, when my mind conjured him up, I guess because hate is distracting. But things happened I still don't understand, and now I taste his tongue as I look at it and my skin stings with the memory of him gripping it, and I just want him to go away and let me die in something resembling peace.

I step back, back to my bed, and lie down again. I close my eyes and say nothing and pretend he's not here.

"_That's not really what you want."_

I try to ignore, but the change in his tone registers. I don't think he's pushing at me, teasing about the dream anymore. He sounds so… genuine, I don't know how I even recognize it in his voice.

"_You're scared, Johnny. You can act tough, tell yourself it doesn't matter if you live or die, try to be Zen about it, but that's bullshit. You feel the time slipping away and you're fucking terrified."_

I hate it when-… not that it ever happened before… but I hate it when he's right. I'm not expecting any last minute reprieve, and there's nothing like knowing your death is certain and moments away to make you realize you want to live.

The clock tick that's been building in my head since I heard, "Guilty," is thundering and screaming, and Logan's words are echoing and taking up all the space in this cell and I can't breathe.

"Leave me… alone!"

"_You're scared and you're pissed that your last thoughts, even before I showed up, weren't about the life you could have had with Lulu, but about me!"_

Can't… breathe…

"_Johnny?"_

My eyes are still squeezed shut. My hands are pressing the sides of my head and making it worse but I just press harder.

"_Man, calm down, just… breathe."_

I hear him but it sounds like he's talking underwater. I'm praying to drown and get it over with, but then I hear… music… familiar. Quietly and imperfectly wrapping around me and pulling me out of it. Air starts to fill my lungs again, and I let my eyes open.

Logan is crouched down close to the bed, watching me. Watching and _humming_. He's humming to me, to calm me. And it worked.

He's humming my song. The one I wrote on the walls where Corinthos kept me-…How? He never saw it, except for the dream him. But… right. He can read my thoughts. Must have stolen it from my mind. _Fucker_, I think, but my mouth actually mumbles, "Thanks."

"_Sure… But it sounded better on my guitar."_

What? What is he talking about?"

"_I played it a lot after I got out of the hospital. I uh, couldn't get it out of my mind… There was a lot that happened I couldn't get out of my mind."_

I stare him down like if he's lying, if he's fucking with me, he will disintegrate under my gaze. He doesn't blink. Just swallows and speaks again.

"_It was real, Johnny. I don't know how it works… It was a dream, but it was mine, too… It was real."_

I… I can't even process what he's telling me… and I don't get a chance.

"Zacchara!"

The guard is opening the door.

"Time's up. Let's go."

He's smiling. They all hate me because they think I killed a cop. They can't wait to see me dead.

I look desperately to Logan. It's too soon. Somehow I know it's too soon.

"_You've got about fifteen minutes. But they go ahead and take you in there… get you ready." _

"I'm not ready," slips out of my mouth. The guard laughs. But Logan doesn't. His expression is kind, even sympathetic.

"_You'll be fine."_

The guard pulls on me, yanks me out into the hall. Then there are two of them hoisting me onto a gurney and strapping me down. I don't fight. I feel like I'm going to throw up, even though I can't remember the last time I ate. Logan's still right there, still in my face.

"_C'mon, don't you wanna prove you can do everything better than me, even death? If you cry, I'll never let you hear the end of it. Don't give them the satisfaction."_

Everything's coming at me at once. Laughter, sharp and cruel, and movement, rolling down the hall, and a bruising sting where a needle jabs my arm to start the IV. And I'm wondering if anyone will be in the viewing room. I hope Claudia didn't come, because she shouldn't have to see this. Probably just be Logan's father, ready to celebrate my last breath.

That's good. That's fine.

But I don't want to be alone. I want someone with me… need someone with me for that last breath. I need…

"_You don't really hate me, remember? Works both ways."_

The last person I would have expected. "You'll stay?" I whisper.

He nods. And then I feel a warmth against my palm and realize… he's holding my hand.

"I thought…"

"_You can't touch me… but I can touch you."_

Then someone tells me it's time to make my last statement. I don't know what I say, but I'm sure they wonder why I'm smiling.


End file.
